The Broken Column Frida Kahlo

Sharon Hooda Diksha Kansal The Broken Column Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is remembered for her self-portraits, her portrayal of pain and suffering. She is known for her interest in Mexican culture and for her representation of the ‘female experience and form’ .Kahlo suffered from polio when she was a kid and she almost died in a bus accident as a youngster. In her lifetime, she had about 30 operations frequently on her spine. Life experience is a common theme in Kahlo's paintings, sketches and drawings. Her physical and emotional pain is illustrated starkly on canvases, as is her tempestuous relationship with her husband, fellow artist 'Diego Rivera' whom she married twice. Gannit Ankori in her book Frida Kahlo: The Fabric of Her Art has mentioned “Her friend Andres Henestrosa stated that Kahlo ‘lived dying'” (10-12). In her paintings Frida was resolved on making ‘her feelings’ familiar. The viewers can in fact ‘feel the pain’ she went through. Actually, during the bus accident, the doctors were careless to confirm the condition of her spine before they assumed her to be fine and discharged her. Hayden Herrera that Frida said, “no one paid any attention to me; what’s more, they didn’t take X-rays” (62-63). She had to wear a range of corsets that reserved her immobilized phrasing for months. Frida herself told the story of her initiation into paintings- to Julian Levy, at the time he was preparing her New York exhibition in 1938, Hayden quotes Frida -“I never thought of painting until 1926, when I was in bed on account of an automobile accident. I was bored as hell in bed with a plaster cast, so I decided to do something.” Both sturdiness and the prominence on suffering pervade Frida’s paintings. A physician Desmond O’Neill , wrote for the British Medical Journal, describes Frida’s works as an imperative device in the understanding of misery in patients citation unclear. The physicist mentions that Frida had the capability to reveal the vague feelings of her continuous and painful torture. While pain is all around us we do not have the capacity to “hold or convey it,” Frida Kahlo is an exemption to expressing the difficulty of her pain. (1031) The devastation to her body from the bus accident is shown in great detail in her 1944 painting 'THE BROKEN COLUMN’. Her lone presence on a ‘fractured’ and infertile land signifies her isolation. Just like an earthquake powers to fracture the surroundings, Kahlo's accident ruined her body. The core of her upper body is vertically torn apart from neck to pubic region to disclose a column put in place of her spine. The crack splitting her chest is held collectively by an orthopedic corset which is an embodiment of her confinement. Her opened body suggests operation, bodily pain, and her fear that without the corset would crumble. There are carpenter’s nails piercing her body. Frida’s resolute impassivity creates a feeling of paralysis, her stoic facial appearance make her stand tall like a statue. Her upper body is nude allowing the beauty of her breasts and torso speaks for her womanhood and unsatisfied desires of youth which too got shattered with her accident. The white cloth covering her lower body might be used to represent a hospital sheet because she was bedridden for quite a long . it may have been also used to portray some social ritual surrounding death or burial customs because usually a burial sheet, white in color, is used to cover a corpse. So the white cloth might portray her confinement to a bed or maybe that she doesn’t want to be touched or disturbed anymore. Although tears are rolling down her cheeks she is facing the viewer sturdily with her head high and is expecting to understand and face her condition with the same approach she has shown towards her life. When she shows herself wounded and crying it is basically “a cry for attention” of her ethical and physical wounds. Hayden Herrera writes“… she is showing her broken spinal column as if her imagination had the power of X-ray vision or the cutting edge of a surgeon… The girl whose ambition was to study medicine turned to painting as a psychological surgery-”. (74) All in all The Broken Column speaks volumes for Frida’s struggle and her state of mind; she is placing her body inside out. Frida has beautifully painted herself ensuring that the viewer can feel her state of ‘paralysis’ himself/herself. References (1) Herrera, Hayden. “Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo”. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1983 (2) O’Neill, Desmond. “The Broken Column by Frida Kahlo.” BMJ: British Medical Journal 342, no. 7805 (May 7, 2011):. Ankori, Gannit (2005). "Frida Kahlo: The Fabric of Her Art". In Dexter, Emma. Frida Kahlo. Tate Modern. <https://lisawallerrogers.com/2009/11/10/frida-kahlo-an-accidental-artist/>. sartle.com<https://www.sartle.com/artwork/the-broken-column-frida-kahlo>.